Malaysia society welfare, government policies, economics and social political development

Malaysia FIFA ranking continues to plunge, according to the latest FIFA ranking Malaysia is on 153th spot from 198 nations.

I bet the politicians will start yelling about the drops and call for the Football Association Malaysia (FAM) to undergo a revamp.

I am not the kind of person that take these rankings seriously, I always felt that all these rankings are dubious, it make no sense to me that World Cup champions Italy is not at #1 spot, and teams like USA is in the top 10 or something.

Fact is however, I can’t remember when was the last time Malaysia national team showed some good performances even in the South East Asia region. Ok we did beat Thailand in last month’s Merdeka Tournament, but we didn’t win the tournament in the end.

FAM has set a goal for Malaysia to qualify for 2018 FIFA World Cup, seems ambitious but what’s the plan? We can’t just set up targets without a solid planning.

FAM need to get back the interest in local footballing. I bet the English game are getting more attention than our Super League nowadays, and the effect goes viral. Without the fans the local league will stumble, and if the league stumbled they will lose more fans. If the situation is not rectified asap, pretty soon we will have a dead Malaysia football league.

We need proper academies that focus on training young footballers while taking care of their education as well. FAM needs to create the mindset that playing football is a worthy career in Malaysia, not just as plain leisure.

I wonder if FAM still imposing the salary cap in the league, if not mistaken it’s maximum paid of RM10,000 for local players. If RM10k is the highest a footballer can get, how are we going to expect the best players to consider it as a lifelong career? Mind that footballers will have to retire early, RM10k a month is not something that’s really attractive.

We can also learn from others, like how Japan burst to become Asia champions in a decade of rapid development, like China that sent their young talent to Brazil for training. These are countries that once trailed behind Malaysia but now far ahead of us in terms of footballing quality, there must be something that we can learn form them.

No point whinning about the drop in FIFA ranking, it’s unavoidable with the current situation. Perhaps some politicians are right, FAM does need some serious revamp. However in the end, it’s action that matters, someone will have to start with a good plan and implement it asap.